The Speaker for the Dead series is pretty wacky at times, but the throughline of the first book is Ender seeking redemption for destroying the Formic homeworld by finding a planet to place the last remaining queen - simultaneously he comes into contact with a pre-industrial alien species, and by helping people come to understand them, he prevents a similar genocide from happening.
I fukken love that book and its sequels, even though Card is :yikes:
Speaker for the Dead and it's sequel are probably my favorite depictions of alien life. Like, truly different though patterns and cultures without just being meaninglessly evil.
There was, though, a famously non-charitable reading of it as Hitler apologia, since Space Hitler (Ender Wiggin) goes to a Portuguese-speaking colony to prove that his genocide was just a misunderstanding and he's just a regular guy who also happens to be a genius at interspecies diplomacy. I think it was at least a little tongue-in-cheek, seeing as Card has perfectly plausible mundane explanations for those influences (missionary work in Brazil, for instance).
Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged. As far as I can tell it's been purged from the written record. Can't find it anywhere.
The Speaker for the Dead series is pretty wacky at times, but the throughline of the first book is Ender seeking redemption for destroying the Formic homeworld by finding a planet to place the last remaining queen - simultaneously he comes into contact with a pre-industrial alien species, and by helping people come to understand them, he prevents a similar genocide from happening.
I fukken love that book and its sequels, even though Card is :yikes:
Speaker for the Dead and it's sequel are probably my favorite depictions of alien life. Like, truly different though patterns and cultures without just being meaninglessly evil.
There was, though, a famously non-charitable reading of it as Hitler apologia, since Space Hitler (Ender Wiggin) goes to a Portuguese-speaking colony to prove that his genocide was just a misunderstanding and he's just a regular guy who also happens to be a genius at interspecies diplomacy. I think it was at least a little tongue-in-cheek, seeing as Card has perfectly plausible mundane explanations for those influences (missionary work in Brazil, for instance).
Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged. As far as I can tell it's been purged from the written record. Can't find it anywhere.
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